The Witch of Blackbird Pond

I picked this book up when I was eleven or so, and thought it completely boring and stupid.I tried again when I was sixteen, and found instead a gripping story I couldn’t put down.

Set in the late 1680’s, around the time of the Salem Witch Trials, Kit Tyler finds her world falling apart. Her guardian and grandfather has just died, and she has to sell everything they own in the island of Barbados to pay off debts.Unloved and alone, her only recourse is to travel a world away to New England, in hopes that her aunt and uncle will take her in.

Kit struggles to fit into the Puritan society.Raised amidst luxury, her bright silk dresses are as hopelessly out of place as she is.But as she reaches out to others, she finds friends in the most unlikely places.Kit will risk anything to keep Hannah, the outcast she befriended, safe, but then she’s thrown into trial and accused of being a witch.Will anyone stand up for her?

Speare writes engagingly and crafts a beautiful and believable story, with a nice dose of suspense and light romance thrown in.